Given:

A business that deals in manufacturing of machined parts

Increase in customer complaints over the last few years
Order booking is increasing quarter to quarter
Company implemented some of the best production practices and quality control policies
200 workers reporting to 20 supervisors and 5 managers
Interpretation leading to core problem:
Clearly, as visible from table 1, new order booking has increased over the last 4 quarters. This
implies, there is enough awareness and branding of the products. Although repeat orders have been
declining which means the products are not meeting expectation.
From table 2, it is evident that customer complaints about packaging and service have remained more
or less constant. And on the other hand complaints about quality and time of delivery are increasing
every quarter.
From the report of procurement department, it is understood that there is a 50-50 ratio of quality scale
4 and 5. This indicates that materials procured in the months of February, March of Q1, June of Q2,
July, August of Q3 and October of Q4 resulted in the customer complaints regarding quality.
Additionally, for 6 months TOD expected was same as TOD received (January, April, July, August,
November, December), for 2 months (February, May) it was before time and for 4 months (March,
June, September, October), TOD received exceeded TOD expected. This indicates inefficiency in
choosing vendors or suppliers.
The report of production department elucidates that due to large number of rejections, the actual
production lacks far behind the production requirement. This in turn gives rise to higher time of
delivery.
From the report of packaging department it is clear that there is no proper planning done to instigate
timely packaging of final goods since actual time in days exceeds time required (predicted by the
company) every month.
Production Center Head says they dont need an inspection department because the workers are
highly trained and are responsible enough to conduct quality checks of their own work. This has been
done to save time and eliminate extra manpower.
The HR Head says, "We do manpower planning as per requirement in different department and
manpower is relocated and reassigned as per requirement to ensure adequate manpower availability in
all the departments."
The worker says, "In the past few months nearly half of us have been fired, rotated to different jobs or
retired and newer hands have taken their place."
Core problem:
There have been complaints because of quality, because of which lot of workers have been fired and
rotated - which led to
(a) Inflow of new workers who are not that trained, as perfection takes time to come, which means
there would be more errors in judgment of quality (as there is no inspection department), again
leading to more complaints and
(b) Workers rotated within jobs/departments, which means they learn and acquire new skill sets and
take time to get accustomed, leading to more time in processing and increased probability of error.
i.e. following mane problems
1. Workers
a. Many new hires and temporary labor
b. Current workers on constant rotation between departments
2. No inspection department
3. Improper scheduling of packaging because workers keep shifting from one department to
other as and when required so actual exceeds estimate
4. Insufficient actual production/improper production planning to produce surplus rather than
falling short on orders
5. Ineffective vendor/supplier

By,

Sakshi Vashist
2013A30
SCMHRD
+91 7743818987